RAGGED THOTS

Robert A. George's ruminations on politics, race, pop culture, sports, comic books & various other sundry temptations of the human condition. Yes, he writes for the New York Post, but the views here are solely his own.

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

D Is For...

(Democratic) Debacle: Biggest GOP wave this century. Only thing preventing takeover of the Senate was three foolish Republican picks in Nevada, Delaware and (arguably) Colorado.

Dereliction (of basic political common sense): In the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the party in power forgot the Clinton '92 campaign mantra, "It's the economy, stupid." Passed an ineffective stimulus -- and then just crossed fingers that things would magically turn around.

Diagnosis: Suicidal health-care. Related to the above, President Obama and Democratic Congress allowed a complicated health care reform to dominate political scene for more than a year. The more a public already rattled over economy learned about it "reform", more public rebelled.

Diversity: Despite the "Tea Party is racist" meme that Democrats, NAACP and some parts of the media tried to push, this GOP wave "looked more like America" than its 1994 counterpart. That's a good thing for the party and the country.

Wild card: Alaska is the new Florida, which is to say the new Minnesota (think Al Franken '08). Lengthy counting battle between the 3M crew: McAdams, Miller and Murkowski. Hunch is that Murkowski may end up winning but have her write-in votes challenged by all sides. Figure on this one being called sometime in December.

Oh, and congratulations to New York's new governor-elect, Andrew Cuomo!!